


A Better Son/Daughter

by aetataureate



Series: Spider-Man is Dead (Long Live Spider-Man) [2]
Category: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Gen, The power of friendship, superpowered teenage self-loathing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-30
Updated: 2018-12-30
Packaged: 2019-09-30 20:43:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,821
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17230901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aetataureate/pseuds/aetataureate
Summary: When Gwen Stacy finds out she’s in another universe with a Peter Parker she let die, it’s—not great.





	A Better Son/Daughter

When Gwen Stacy finds out she’s in another universe with a Peter Parker she let die, it’s—not great.

She finds out on Yahoo! News, because that’s what the homepage is on the school computers in this crappy alternate universe where Yahoo! is still in business. She finds out not because the picture of him in the suit catches her eye—it’s an action shot, and the colors don’t mean anything to her, they don’t make the pathways in her brain light up in recognition. It’s the picture next to it, blond dude, not old but like, an adult-adult, smiling for an ID photo. She has _myspa_ typed into the search bar, half her mind set to wondering whether the same social media is even relevant in this universe, she’s got to figure out the deal with this Morales kid, and even though he doesn’t, not really, she thinks _Huh, he looks like Peter_.

Then, of course, he is Peter.

Gwen stops. The clock ticks. The tile with the two photos slides over to the next headline, something about football, and the world starts up again. Gwen clicks back. Reads the article. Reads other articles, which have the same bullshit non-information as the first article. Wants to punch the computer. The wall. The kid next to her. Doesn’t. Gets up, and walks very lightly out of the stupid useless school she never should have come to in the first place.

***

It’s not the best way to find out (also bad, her father knocking on her bedroom door, hat in his hands, _it’s about your friend Peter_ ), Gwen reflects on the train. It’s also not the worst way (reaching out with shaking hands for a pulse, but does it mean anything if she can’t find one? she’s not a doctor, but he looks dead, and wrong, and _oh god_ , she doesn’t want to touch ~~it~~ him). But still, if the universe is going to screw with her like this, it could at least do her the basic courtesy of breaking it to her gently. She didn’t know the guy, but she feels like next of kin. It makes her want to crawl out of her own body.

She ends up in Times Square. There are people everywhere, the vehicle traffic blocked off for whatever reason, and they’re wearing Peter’s mask. She knows why, and it annoys the crap out of her, but then she thinks _screw it_ and pulls hers up too.

The other Peter’s face is up in lights, dozens of feet tall, hundreds of feet in the air. Her Peter’s face had been in the school bulletin. Not even a full page, and it had sort of glossed over the ignominious circumstances surrounding his death. It talked about his science—trophies, or whatever. She had never paid enough attention when he was alive.

She wanders around kind of aimlessly. Whether it’s Spider-Sense or luck or the law of large numbers, it’s the best way of happening upon something suspicious that she’s uncovered. She’s about to give up and break into, oh, the morgue? the police station? something, when she sees him. He has a big Army-style jacket and sweatpants on over the suit, and is clearly relying on the costumes in the crowd, public knowledge that Spider-Man is dead, and the fact that he looks like he just crawled out of a dumpster to keep from being recognized. As she watches, he webs a bottle of Mountain Dew and a pretzel out of one of the street carts. She gets it. He’s a _moron_.

He also looks more like her Peter than the blond Colossus towering over them ever could, even with twenty years and a universe between them. She also knows, dead-gut certain in a way she’s learned to stop questioning, that he’s like her, lonely and left-behind.

She follows him.

***

It’s no surprise that Peter B. turns out to be completely infuriating. He’s got all of her Peter’s issues, if those issues were thrown in a pressure cooker with forty pounds, the mantle of Spider-Man, and a divorce, then left to simmer for twenty years. He can’t handle seeing May. He can’t handle seeing MJ. He’s insanely jealous of a dead dude, he has completely unrealistic expectations for Miles, and he won’t even change out of the sweatpants. Gwen is a teenage girl, she should have the monopoly on body image issues, and besides, everyone knows that sweatpants just make it obvious you have something to be ashamed of.

None of that is the reason that Peter B. makes her furious. The reason Peter B. makes her furious, makes her swell up with a rage that reaches all the way out to her fingertips, too big for her skin and fit to burst, is that Peter B. got the chance to see Peter Parker grow up and he wasted it. He fucking squandered it, doing anything less than loving everything Peter Parker was and is and could ever be.

It’s not the most rational emotion, so she doesn’t say anything about it.

Of course, despite the tragedy that is his life and his choices, Peter B. actually seems like a pretty good Spider-Man. (Spider-Man. Spider- _Man_. As much as she repeats it, it still trips off the tongue weird.) His universe is still extant, for one, and from the sound of it there haven’t really been any mass-casualty events under what could reasonably be considered his jurisdiction. And that’s without a Spider-Man who’s being the best he can be.

Gwen has spent her entire tenure as Spider-Woman being the best she can be, so that’s kind of—not great. That is, the lack of a mass-cas is always great, but the fact that Peter can achieve than result powered by pizza and sadness while she’s busting her ass twenty-four-seven trying to make _ballet_ applicable to _combat_? That’s not great. It taps into what she’s most afraid of on her bad days, when someone gets hurt and she’s embarrassed by her ballet slippers and the pink in her costume. Despite the ugliness about her Peter, the jealousy and the anger, the monumental effort it would have taken to turn him into anything resembling blond, perfect Peter, despite the way he had ended, on her bad days, the only reason she wants him back is that surely he would have done a better job than she does. After all, what kind of stupid idea was it to have a Spider-Woman?

***

Then there’s Miles. Miles is, on one hand, kind of cute. Like, don’t get her wrong, he’s fifteen months younger than her, she checked. Which, fifteen months isn’t _that_ long? But fifteen months ago she was like, a completely different person. Younger. He’s _two_ grades behind her because of how their birthdays are, so she’s way more mature.

He’s a Spider-Man from an alternate universe! That’s a good reason, thank God.

That’s the thing about Miles: she gets distracted. He’s a sweet guy and he likes good music and he’s funny and kind of nervous, which means sometimes they’re talking or taking selfies with Peter B.’s dumb sweatpants in the background, so she’s _distracted_ when the fact that she hates him hits her like a dump truck going ninety miles an hour.

It’s more complicated than that. The thing she hates Miles for, the thing she can never forgive him for, she hates herself for too.

Miles was there when a Peter Parker died; Miles didn’t save him. Gwen didn’t either, and that is unforgivable.

Of course, saving Peter Parker wasn’t Miles’ job. Not like it was Gwen’s, so she makes sure to hate herself the most. Also, she doesn’t say anything. She generally tries not to externalize.

***

Forgiving Miles isn’t like forgiving herself, but it feels too much like a first step. It contradicts the narrative. Gwen needs the narrative, on the worst days.

On the bad days, Gwen wonders if her Peter could have done a better job because she’s a woman. On the worst days, she knows her Peter could have done a better job, because she’s _her_. And there’s something really, terribly wrong with her.

The narrative is important. It’s load-bearing in terms of how she manages the whole thing. She explains it to herself over and over, steps in the logic like beads on a rosary. _There’s something wrong with you. You only failed because you can’t do better. You won’t be better. Someone else could, but you can’t, because there’s something wrong with you._

Except then one night, she asks Miles about his universe’s Peter. The blond angel, the one she let die because she was busy dicking around in a middle-school science class instead of investigating the obviously sketchy laboratory. Miles was the only one who ever met him, and she wants to know.

Miles thinks about it for a minute. “He was nice,” he says finally. “Like, I only met him for a minute? But he seemed really nice. He was funny. He was really excited to help me.” Gwen’s breath catches in her throat, suddenly. “Like, there was all this scary stuff happening, but he made me feel like it was going to be okay. And, like, obviously it wasn’t okay, and now I think maybe he knew that? But also, it kind of _is_ okay, and I think maybe he knew that too.” Miles smiles at her. “He was kind of like you.”

There’s one terrible moment of overwhelming, torrential grief. For that Peter Parker, for her own, for the fact that she’ll never be able to hate Miles again, and for herself. Because this universe had a Gwen Stacy. She looked her up before she ever showed up at Brooklyn Visions, to make sure she wasn’t doubling up. That Gwen Stacy fell off a bridge when she was eighteen, and she died, and it wasn’t her Peter Parker’s fault, nor did it save him in some kind of cosmic balancing act. Peter B. might have a Gwen, or a Miles, and they might be alive or dead, happy or unhappy, old or young, and that isn’t his fault either. And the possibilities ripple outward and outward, to everybody, across all the universes, and suddenly, the narrative doesn’t make sense anymore. There isn’t some kind of kaleidoscopic shift; it doesn’t break apart and reform. It’s more like she’s been standing in a dark room and reaching out blindly, and finally, her fingertips are brushing the wall. She has something to lean on. If she follows it, it might lead somewhere.

Because Gwen Stacy is a person. Just one person, maybe a good one. Maybe a good friend.

Miles is looking at her oddly. She smiles at him. “Come on,” she says. “I’ll race you to 43rd and Broadway.”

“First person to web the street sign wins!” Miles crows, and laughing, Spider-Man and Spider-Woman swing off into the night.

**Author's Note:**

> At first I was like “hey, I should make this compliant with the Spider-Gwen canon!” but then I googled stuff that sounded really neat but would have made this fic twice as long, so I didn’t. Death of the author bay-bee. Apologies if that doesn’t work for you.
> 
> This series intends to look at the death of Peter Parker, and the impact it has on each of the Spider-Beings. If you liked this and that sounds interesting, please feel free to subscribe. A massive thank you to everyone who read the first installment and commented—it’s been a joy to interact with people in this brand-new fandom, and people who loved the Spider-Verse movie as much as I did.
> 
> [Grace](https://archiveofourown.org/users/gracelesso/pseuds/gracelesso/works) is a great beta reader and a better friend.
> 
> A Better Son/Daughter is a song by Rilo Kiley.


End file.
